Here we have yet another example of why unions should never, ever be allowed for government workers. A union that claims to represent police officers in Moriarty, New Mexico, is attempting to force the city to negotiate raises for officers quite despite the fact that the union doesn’t count a single member of the force as a member.

You read that right. A union with no members is claiming that it has the power to force a city to give police officers raises courtesy of the taxpayer.

Back in 2010 the city’s officers did vote to invite a union to represent them but when all was said and done only two officers joined the union. The majority refused. And since 2010 the two officers that did belong to the union have since left the force leaving the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) without even a single member on the force.

Yet, AFSCME is insisting that they have the right to negotiate raises despite not having a single member for which to negotiate.Read more

What are the best jobs on average in California? Apparently being a government worker. Infuriatingly, government workers live far better, have higher salaries, retire earlier and have better benefits than most in the private sector even though, like leeches, these same government workers live off the taxpayer.

The worst of all worlds for the taxpayer is a government union. Government unions do nothing whatever for the very people paying the bills. They do not improve services, they don’t professionalize workers, and they wildly grow the waste of tax dollars. Worse, government unions give public servants higher salaries, richer benefits, and earlier retirement dates than the taxpayers footing the bills.

Even the patron Saint of the liberal left, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was adamant that government workers should never be allowed to unionize. FDR thought it was “unthinkable and intolerable” to have a government workers union.

It’s for good reason, too. Government workers do not create the profits that might help enrich benefits. Whenever government unions get raises it simply means that taxpayers have to pay more to make up the difference.Read more

Unions are having a tough time of it in Wisconsin of late. Since Governor Scott Walker saved the state budget with his new union rules and since he gave workers a choice, Wisconsin’s teachers unions have been in steep decline and this year’s certification vote was further proof that workers don’t want unions.

Under Act 10 in Wisconsin, it is now the law that teachers unions have to be re-certified each year and to be recognized as a bargaining unit the unions must get 51% support from members.

Since Act 10, unions have found that members are very, very unhappy to be part of their organization and thousands of teachers are opting out. This year, nearly 15,000 public employee union members refused to vote for their union, and 25 more unions were decertified by a vote. That is 100 fewer unions than last year even applied for re-certification.

This brings the number of Wisconsin teachers unions to 285 state wide, down from 408 last year.Read more

Let me describe one larger point regarding public employee unions. It relates to the anti-competitiveness of unions generally, the same idea that Richard Epstein often writes about. But I’ll greatly simplify it for you.

Companies are not in business to make jobs. They’re in business to make profits. (It’s no different than when you invest your money.) Jobs are necessary to make profits.

Hiring labor is part of the cost of doing business. The object is to keep that cost down, but not to the extent that it will affect the performance of the company.

That means people who are capable and perform well are what businesses need, and it is why they compete with other companies to get such workers.

Example: In my profession, prepress computer operators who were fast and accurate could negotiate for higher wages. Through that reputation, they were in demand. Poor workers were not.

Such workers do not need unions. Mediocre and poor workers need unions. Unions benefit those who are the worst at their job.Read more

In another example of why government unions should all be eliminated, two union operatives in the Illinois school system have been the happy recipients of million-dollar pensions–courtesy of the taxpayers–for teaching classes for only a single day.

Back in 2011 I wrote of union operatives Steven Preckwinkle and David Piccioli at the Illinois teachers union who both “taught” only one day in the Illinois school system and then went on to be union operatives for the rest of their careers that were supposedly in “education.” Yet despite their lack of actually educating anyone, both were still demanding to get huge, generous pensions for being “teachers.”Read more

Obama’s Illinois perennially ranks at the very bottom of every statistic that marks a successful state and a new report on America’s “sinkhole states” finds that Illinois again ranks at the very bottom this time for how much state debt each citizen is saddled with.

The statistics gathered by the excellent Chicago-based budget watchdog group Truth In Accounting calculated how much state debt–obligations like pensions, healthcare plans for retirees, etc–each citizen would have to pay to retire the debt in a lump sum.

Truth In Accounting found that Connecticut is the worst state in the union with each citizens owing 48 thousand dollars per citizen to retire the debt. But coming in a close second is the state of Illinois with a whopping 43 thousand dollars per citizen in debt.Read more

Here is a perfect example of why unions should be outlawed for all government workers. And I do mean all government workers. A new study finds that we, the American taxpayer, are ripped off to the tune of $23.5 million a year in tax money that goes to pay IRS union members to do union work while they are on the clock and supposed to be working for we, the people.

That’s right, you the taxpayer are paying IRS workers not to do IRS work. You are paying IRS employees to do nothing productive.

This is called “official time” (sometimes it’s called “union time”) and it is paid to IRS employees who are officers in the government union. These union officers carry out union work on the clock, during the time they are supposed to be doing work for the IRS.

Some of the activities these thieves engage in are things such as organizing union meetings, talking to other union members about union matters, or going on union-sponsored training events that aren’t training for IRS work but is instead training for union issues. And you are paying them a salary to do all this.Read more

A group of unions in California have gotten together to criticize the Oakland Unified School District for refusing to allow a lesson plan to appear on its website that compares murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal to civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The “Urban Dreams” lesson plan tells students to “critically examine a possible parallel between Martin Luther King, Jr., and someone else many believe is currently targeted by the U.S. government, Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

The Oakland school district decided to jettison the lesson plan because it lionized a cop killer and criticized the police. Its comparison of the murderer to King was especially galling.

But the unions had an opposing opinion on the efficacy of a lesson plan that celebrates a murderer as someone “just like” beloved civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.Read more

As Obama starts shipping tens of thousands of these illegal alien minors all across the nation to be housed in cities everywhere, your tax dollars follow them and some of this money is going to Obama’s pals in liberal organizations and unions to care for these children all paid for by you and me.

Obama is pumping billions of dollars into the feeding and care of hundreds of thousands of illegals who have swamped our southern border expecting–and getting–all sorts of freebies not to mention expecting to become instant citizens. But it isn’t just the billions he is spending at the border going on in this mounting crisis. Obama is also billions on these illegals in other parts of the country.

In Illinois, for instance, several left-wing groups, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)–all huge supporters of Obama–are getting hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to care for illegals shipped from Texas to the Windy City.Read more

A new poll of likely Chicago voters seems to find that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in bad shape for his re-election coming up next year. The poll shows that two other candidates are far and away more popular than the incumbent mayor. One of those two is Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, a woman who is nearly an out and proud communist. But, if Chicagoans would vote for Lewis, they don’t deserve the vote at all.

This new Chicago Sun-Times poll shows Emanuel losing–and badly–to two other possible mayoral candidates in next year’s election. The biggest disparity is that between the mayor and Current Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. She really slams Emanuel beating him 55 percent to 31 percent in the poll.

Preckwinkle has made no moves at all to run against Emanuel and insists she won’t. Still, rumors abound that she will throw her hat in the ring, anyway.

To be honest, it really is no surprise that Emanuel is finding low favorables in polling this far out from the election. Mayor Emanuel has failed in many respects as Chicago’s mayor. He has done nothing at all to address the mounting pension crisis, spending is still skyrocketing, he’s solved none of the mess that previous mayor Richie Daley left him, and worse of all violence in the city has soared to never before seen rates of blood shed.Read more

Years ago folks that stood against unions always had that one obstacle of “private” concerns in the way of urging people away from unionism. But today, with most unions being tied directly to government, now fighting unions is an act of beneficial government reform.

Once upon a time, the biggest hurdle for those arguing against unionism was the simple truth–and it was a truth–that unions and businesses were private concerns and if the two entities agreed to co-exist, who was an anti-union activist to say anything against the arrangement?

This is a simple, logical question that always made anti-union activists look like meddling outsiders. And the truth is, no matter how right they were that unionism is a bad idea for everyone, they were meddlers!

But today we have a far different situation for those who stand against unions. Since 1959 when unions were first allowed to organize government workers unions have slowly encroached into nearly every aspect of government causing spending to soar, bloating pensions beyond belief, and destroying the efficiency of government.Read more

Several years ago the Governor of Illinois decided with a fiat decision to hand his union buddies millions of free taxpayer dollars by suddenly forcing all private in-home healthcare workers to be unionized without their knowledge or approval. Today the U.S. Supreme Court said that Illinois was not allowed to do this.

The year was 2003 and Democrat Rod Blagojevich–who later went to jail for corruption–was the governor who decided that all Illinois citizens who get a stipend from the state to help them take care of their mentally and/or physically disabled family member must be unionized.Read more

This one is pretty amazing. The US Supreme Court has delivered a unanimous slap to the President saying that his recess appointments were illicit. Even the court’s liberals said Obama was wrong on this.

If you are out of the loop, here is what happened: Obama wanted to make some extremely partisan appointments to the National Labor Relations board (NLRB) so that he could deliver even more pro union decisions in the disputes between labor and businesses that the NLRB is set up to adjudicate.

The U.S. Senate did not like his choices because the folks Obama wanted to appoint were obvious union shills that would further erode the NLRB’s status as an unbiased arbitrator between labor unions and the business sector (as it is supposed to be).Read more

Oh, he thought that just because he had billions of dollars, all he had to do was flit into a New Jersey school system, spread some of his cash around, and voila kids would get a “good” education. But reality was a different thing as when Mark Zuckerberg tried it, he found that the greedy teachers union stole all the cash and his millions didn’t help the kids at all.

Yes, Facebook Billionaire Mark Suckerberg–er, I mean Zuckerberg–was mugged by reality and found out exactly why Johnny can’t read. Because our system of mis-education is held prisoner to the anti-education, greedy, uncaring, left-wing teachers unions who don’t give a flying fig about the kids. It’s all about them stealing as much cash out of the system for their bloated pensions and high-salaried union bosses as humanely possible quite despite whether it hurts the kids or not.

In 2010 super rich Suckerberg gave $100 million big ones to help turn around Newark, New Jersey’s failing schools. He made a big show of the whole thing, too, even making his announcement on the Oprah show.Read more

When one thinks about unions, one usually assumes that it is an organization geared toward guarding the interests of its members, the average, every day worker. But in Michigan that notion seems almost quaint. No, in Michigan, the unions are guarding the interests of union bigwigs and actually dealing away the benefits of members to keep the unions toughs in clover.

Union thugs in the Wyoming Public Schools district near Grand Rapids, Michigan, has negotiated away up to $12,700 in annual salary and benefits for teachers just so it can try and keep a provision in the contract that allows the union to forcibly withhold dues money out of teachers paychecks as a mandatory condition of employment–a provision that now stands contrary to state law, by the way.Read more

Started in 2004, the left-wing propaganda website Media Matters for America has been spreading lies about Republicans and conservatives for a decade, now. Naturally the site has always claimed the center-right coalition is “anti-worker” for opposing unions, but this organization itself has never been unionized. Now the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) is agitating to organize Media Matters and the propaganda outfit is fit to be tied over the union’s efforts.

Started by Clinton operative David Brock, Media Matters for America (MM) has been programming the left-wing media since its debut and one of the organization’s repeated topics has been its blanket support for unions and for all the things unions advocate. Most especially a support for the union goal of “card check.”

Card check is a union scheme of making the unionization of a business easier–easier for unions, not employers. One of its features is to have employees voting on whether or not to allow a union to enter the workplace forced to vote their preference out in the open, without a secret ballot.Read more

If you own a company and want to relocate to another part of the country, Obama wants you to know that you have no right to decide where that location will be. Obama wants you to know that only a labor union can make that decision. You have no say in the matter.

At least, that is what Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) wants to do with a new rule that would give unions veto power over where a company re-opens its doors.

The goal, of course, is to destroy the economies of right-to-work states and force them to allow destructive unions to hold sway over their business sector or risk economic ruin.

Currently it is perfectly legal (not to mention moral, I might add) for a company to decided it wants to close its facilities in one part of the country and move some or all of it’s business to another part of the country. We call it the free enterprise system.Read more

Employees, whether unionized or not, who work for companies that have government contracts make far more per hour than employees who do similar jobs in the same area, a new study finds. This fact shows that government is essentially breaking its compensation own law.

The Service Contract Act of 1965 maintains that employees working for companies with government contracts must make the prevailing wage for their job in the area in which they work.

That means that if a carpet-layer in Peoria, Illinois makes $10.27 per hour, then any company that lays carpet for the government must pay their carpet-layers $10.27 per hour. Seems fair enough, right?

But the study shows that this isn’t happening. These government contractors aren’t making the prevailing wage. In fact, they are making far more than the prevailing wage! And all at the expense to the taxpayers, naturally.Read more

Did you think that math was a subject that is by its very nature free of political ideology? Did you think that math was just, well, math? Maybe it won’t surprise you that Chicago teachers union chief, Karen Lewis, disagrees with you and thinks that math isn’t just math but should also be a platform to push left-wing “social justice” propaganda on students.

The rotund Lewis made her pronouncements at an education conference called the Network for Public Education conference held on March 1, 2014 in Austin, Texas.

During her remarks Lewis praised the efforts of extremist left-winger Bob Peterson who is unfortunately in charge of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin teachers union. Peterson wrote a book that is used in the classroom to push left-wing ideology on kids and Lewis thinks everyone should emulate that.

“You want to talk about organizing? You want to talk about social justice?” Lewis bellowed.Read more

Several years ago a mother who cares for a disabled teen was shocked to discover that the Gov. of Illinois was going to force her into a union because she gets state aid to care for her son. She protested this forced unionization and the forced paying of dues that goes with it. Now a union professor is saying that unions should use violence against this woman to silence her.

Dr. Alan Singer, a Professor of Secondary Education at Hofstra University, urged unions to take “aggressive, illegal actions” saying it was “the only way” to stop people like Pam Harris from hurting the union cause of extorting business and government.

Mrs. Harris is the woman behind the Illinois lawsuit fighting state imposed unionism (Harris v. Quinn) that has made it to the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States.Read more

A union thug in Michigan was wide-eyed with faux shock when he was told that publicly posting the names of workers who opted out of the union was viewed as an intimidation tactic.

Union thug Lawrence Roehrig, international vice president of AFSCME and secretary treasurer of Michigan AFSCME Council 25 (that is a government worker’s union, folks) defended the practice of outing the workers who opted out of the union under Michigan’s new right to work rules saying that it was just a way to educate workers.

In the same way a business owner is paying for “protection” when a mobster demands payment to make sure nothing “happens” to them, thug Roehrig said, “You’re not harassing them. It gives you an indication of who’s paying and who isn’t.”Read more

Only days ago the most hatefilled, partisan member of the Senate, Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid, again cried that the evil Koch brothers are destroying the country with their political donations. But it turns out that the Kochs are 59th on the big donor list. Worse, liberals take up almost all of the top 10 donors.

There has been gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes among extreme lefties over the big money donations made to conservative and libertarian causes by David and Charles Koch. They helped create the political activist group Americans For Prosperity and have funded many, many such groups across the nation. This center right activism, of course, makes them a target of the haters on the left and push them into top spot as the left’s most hated boogy men.

But a recent look at the nations deep pocket donors shows that the brothers are way, way down the list of big donors and that lefties fill most of those top slots.Read more

It is a cultural difference that could end up backfiring, but Volkswagen officials at the Tennessee auto plant are still pledging that they will try to help unions invade the plant even though workers voted not to join a union.

This morning, Senator Kirk Dillard was “especially proud” to accept the endorsement of the Illinois Education Association (IEA) for the GOP nomination for Illinois Governor.

According to IEA president Cinda Klickna Dillard has shown that he values the expertise and opinions of the IEA.

“Sen. Dillard supports our fight for adequate funding for public education and he stood up to tremendous pressure and voted against the unfair and unconstitutional pension bill, Senate Bill 1,” Klickna said during this morning’s press conference.

“Illinois needs a fighter who believes in public schools and that is why IEA is proud to recommend Senator Kirk Dillard for the Republican nomination for governor,” she added.

The IEA is the largest education union in the state with some 130,000 members.

Dillard focused his comments on “the teachers” and education in general, but steered clear of talking about the union itself or the political abuses perpetrated public employees unions in general.Read more

The waste in Milwaukee is a crime, with millions of the tax payers’ money going right out the window for no reason… or IS there a reason. It is being done as a teachers union protection racket, in reality.

Teachers unions need to be eliminated. Not just in Milwaukee. EVERYWHERE!

It seems like a foolish move by Volkswagen for allowing the United Auto Workers (UAW) to organize its American plants. Not only did the UAW screw Volkswagen in the past, but even now the union admits that it is raising union dues solely to replenish its strike fund so unionistas can walk out. It’s like Volkswagen is buying its own rope for its execution.

Or, as Steve Moore of The Wall Street Journal says, “it’s like inserting a cancer cell into a body.”

That is how Journal editorial board member Moore characterized the act of allowing the UAW to organize Volkswagen’s American auto plants. “That one cancer cell is going to multiply and kill the body. It’s a disruptive influence,” he continued.

Worse, the UAW wants to raise dues for members for the expressed reason of filling strike fund coffers, this according to UAW Boss Bob King.

So, if Volkswagen gives in to the UAW’s demands it will only be helping the union to walk out at the earliest opportunity.Read more

Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters recently traveled to Michigan to find out why the teachers union there is fighting so hard to force the taxpayers to give a big cash payment to a teacher convicted of molesting a child.

Watters confronted Steven Cook, the head of the Michigan Education Association–the teachers union there–over why the MEA would fight so hard to force the taxpayers to give this child molester a $10,000 payout even after he was convicted for his crime?Read more

Five Houston, Texas school bus drivers have been disciplined for supposedly “misusing school equipment” by using bus radios to pray for a co-worker whose daughter was killed by a car as she walked to school.

The five Houston Independent School District bus drivers had “disciplinary letters” placed in their employment files for using a back channel to pray together after another driver’s 12-year-old daughter was run down while walking home from school on December 16, the media reported.

In response to this unfair disciplinary action, several drivers, their union representatives, and local ministers gathered in front of the Houston schools administration building to publicly protest the move and also to publicly pray for a resolution to the situation.Read more

One of the biggest solutions reformers have to fix our failing schools is to give parents vouchers that can be used to send kids to the parent’s choice of schools. But one union-backing school superintendent in North Carolina is so against any solutions outside those offered by unions that she is going to the absurd extreme of saying that vouchers would be used to “train terrorists.”

That’s right. If you support giving parents a better choice for their children’s education, then you are a supporter of terrorism.

North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson says of the voucher legislation, “There is nothing in the legislation that would prevent someone from establishing a school of terror.”

Really? That is her concern? Where did this come from, you might wonder? Why, she’s attacking Christian schools, of course.Read more

It turns out that the viral video depicting an uncaring, screaming “Google” employee that was attacking innocent union organizers in San Francisco ended up being a union organizer attempting to make a scene, gin up emotion in favor of unions and make Google employees look like elitist jerks who hate poor people. Yes, this guy turns out to be a liar.

Unions have been protesting the private bus line that Google set up to ferry its own employees from downtown San Francisco to its facilities in the city and the unions got a big boost from a viral video that seemed to show a jerk of a Google employee telling union members to move out of the city if they can’t afford to live there.

When the video first began to make the rounds on the Internet it was presented as a mean Google guy attacking poor, innocent (and female) union organizers making Google and its employees look bad.Read more

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-By Warner Todd Huston
Here we have yet another example of why unions should never, ever be allowed for government workers. A union that claims to represent police officers in Moriarty, New Mexico, is attempti